Top Tools for Monitoring Server Uptime and Security

Server uptime and security monitoring are essential for businesses that depend on websites, applications, databases, email systems, and other online services.

A server can appear healthy while problems are developing underneath. Increasing resource usage, slower response times, application errors, failed services, or unusual traffic can sometimes provide warning signs before a more serious outage occurs.

Monitoring gives IT teams visibility into what is happening and, more importantly, provides alerts when something requires attention.

The right monitoring strategy depends on what you need to protect and how much visibility your business requires. A small website may only need uptime checks and downtime alerts, while a larger environment may require infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log analysis, security monitoring, and automated alerting.

What Should You Monitor?

Before choosing a monitoring tool, it helps to understand the metrics that matter.

1. Uptime and Availability

Uptime measures how consistently a website, server, application, or service remains available.

For example, an uptime target of 99.9% allows approximately 8 hours and 46 minutes of downtime over a 365-day period.

However, an uptime percentage alone does not tell you everything. A service could have a high annual uptime percentage while still experiencing several disruptive outages.

Monitoring should therefore record individual incidents as well as overall availability.

2. Response Time

Response time measures how quickly a server or application responds to a request.

An increase in response time can indicate problems such as:

• High server load
• Database performance issues
• Network congestion
• Application errors
• Insufficient server resources
• Problems with external services

Tracking response time over time makes it easier to identify performance degradation.

3. Downtime Duration

Downtime duration records how long a service remains unavailable.

Knowing the duration of individual incidents can help organizations understand the practical impact of outages and compare actual performance against internal targets or an SLA.

4. Server Resource Usage

Server monitoring should also consider resource utilization, including:

• CPU usage
• Memory usage
• Disk space
• Disk activity
• Network traffic
• Process activity
• System load

A sudden increase in resource consumption may indicate a legitimate increase in traffic, a misconfigured application, a failing service, or potentially malicious activity.

5. Errors and Failed Services

A server can still respond to requests while individual services are failing.

Depending on the environment, monitoring may need to track:

• HTTP errors
• Application errors
• Database failures
• Failed background processes
• Service restarts
• Connection failures
• Authentication failures

This provides a more complete picture than simply checking whether a server responds to a basic ping.

6. Security Events

Security monitoring can help identify suspicious or potentially malicious activity.

Depending on the infrastructure, useful indicators can include:

• Failed login attempts
• Unusual authentication activity
• Malware detections
• Unexpected changes to files
• Suspicious network connections
• Firewall events
• Vulnerability alerts
• Unusual traffic patterns

Security monitoring should complement, rather than replace, other security controls such as patching, access management, backups, firewalls, and endpoint protection.

Server Monitoring Tools to Consider

Different monitoring platforms serve different purposes. Some focus primarily on uptime, while others provide broader infrastructure, application, and security visibility.

1. UptimeRobot

UptimeRobot is primarily focused on monitoring the availability of websites, servers, APIs, and other services.

It can send alerts when a monitored service becomes unavailable, allowing businesses to discover outages without waiting for customers to report them.

UptimeRobot’s current documentation states that its monitoring intervals vary by plan, with its Free Plan checking monitors every five minutes and paid plans offering shorter intervals.

This makes it useful for businesses that need straightforward availability monitoring without deploying a complex observability platform.

Best suited for:

• Website uptime monitoring
• Basic server availability
• API monitoring
• Downtime alerts
• Small businesses and simple monitoring requirements

UptimeRobot

2. Pingdom

Pingdom is designed around website and application performance monitoring and can provide visibility into availability and response times.

This type of monitoring can be useful when a business needs to know not only whether a website is online, but also whether users are experiencing performance problems.

For example, monitoring can help identify changes in response time or availability that may require investigation.

Pingdom Insights

3. Datadog

Datadog provides broader observability capabilities for infrastructure and applications.

Rather than focusing only on whether a website is online, an observability platform can bring together information from different parts of an environment.

This can be useful for organizations managing:

• Cloud infrastructure
• Servers
• Containers
• Applications
• Databases
• Logs
• Networks
• Security events

Datadog can therefore be more appropriate for organizations that need centralized visibility across a complex technology environment.

Datadog

4. New Relic

New Relic provides application performance monitoring (APM) and broader observability capabilities.

APM can help teams monitor application response times, resource usage, errors, transactions, and other performance indicators. New Relic also provides infrastructure, browser, log, and other monitoring capabilities.

This makes it particularly relevant when the main concern is understanding why an application is slow or failing, rather than simply determining whether a server is reachable.

New Relic Application Monitoring

Comparing Server Monitoring Tools

There is no single monitoring platform that is appropriate for every environment.

The appropriate choice depends on the size of your environment, the systems you need to monitor, your alerting requirements, and how much technical information your team needs.

Why Monitoring Matters

Monitoring is valuable because it can reduce the amount of time between a problem occurring and your team becoming aware of it.

Without monitoring, businesses may discover an outage only after:

• Customers complain
• Employees report that a system is unavailable
• Orders stop processing
• Website traffic suddenly drops
• Email stops working
• An application begins returning errors

With appropriate monitoring and alerting, an IT team can receive information about an incident as it develops.

The financial impact of downtime varies considerably by organization, industry, system, and type of outage. ITIC’s 2024 research, for example, found that 97% of large enterprises with more than 1,000 employees reported an average hourly downtime cost exceeding $100,000, while 41% reported costs between $1 million and $5 million per hour. These figures apply specifically to the surveyed large enterprises and should not be treated as a universal cost for every business.

For smaller businesses, the impact may be different, but downtime can still result in lost sales, interrupted operations, customer dissatisfaction, and additional recovery work.

Monitoring vs. Security Monitoring

It is important to distinguish between availability monitoring and security monitoring.

A basic uptime monitor may tell you:

“The website is not responding.”

It does not necessarily tell you:

“The server has been compromised.”

Security monitoring requires additional visibility into activity such as authentication events, vulnerabilities, malware, network traffic, system changes, and other indicators of compromise.

A business may therefore need multiple layers of monitoring rather than relying on one tool for everything.

How to Build an Effective Monitoring Strategy

Choosing a tool is only part of the process. A monitoring strategy should define what needs to be monitored, what constitutes a problem, and what should happen after an alert.

1. Identify Critical Systems

Start by listing the systems that would have the greatest operational impact if they became unavailable.

These might include:

• Public websites
• E-commerce platforms
• Email
• Databases
• Customer portals
• Business applications
• VPNs
• Network infrastructure
• Cloud services

2. Establish Performance Baselines

You need to know what “normal” looks like before you can identify unusual behavior.

Record typical:

• Response times
• CPU usage
• Memory usage
• Network traffic
• Error rates
• Application activity

A baseline makes it easier to distinguish normal fluctuations from genuine problems.

3. Configure Meaningful Alerts

Too many alerts can create alert fatigue, causing important notifications to be overlooked.

Alerts should therefore be based on meaningful thresholds or events.

For example:

• Website becomes unavailable
• Disk space falls below a defined threshold
• CPU remains unusually high
• Application error rate increases
• A critical service stops
• Repeated authentication failures occur

4. Define Who Responds

An alert is only useful if someone knows what to do with it.

Define:

• Who receives the alert
• Who investigates it
• Who escalates it
• What constitutes a critical incident
• When external support should be contacted

5. Review Monitoring Data Regularly

Monitoring should not be treated as a set-and-forget system.

Review historical data to identify:

• Recurring outages
• Performance degradation
• Capacity problems
• Repeated application errors
• Unusual traffic patterns
• Frequently triggered alerts

This can help organizations address underlying problems rather than repeatedly responding to the same symptoms.

Monitoring for Small Businesses

Small businesses do not necessarily need an enterprise observability platform.

A practical monitoring setup might include:

1. Website uptime monitoring
2. Server resource monitoring
3. Backup monitoring
4. Security alerts
5. SSL and domain renewal reminders
6. Application or service monitoring where necessary

The right level of monitoring depends on how critical each system is to the business.

For a business whose website generates leads or processes sales, website availability may deserve particular attention. For a company dependent on internal applications, network and server monitoring may be equally important.

Monitoring Is Part of a Larger IT Strategy

Monitoring should work alongside other IT practices rather than operating independently.

For example, monitoring can tell you that disk space is running low, but you still need a process for determining why storage is increasing and how to resolve the issue.

Similarly, a security alert may identify suspicious activity, but the organization needs appropriate access controls, backups, patching, incident response procedures, and security practices to reduce the overall risk.

Archer IT Solutions provides Managed IT Services for businesses that need ongoing support and management of their IT environment.

You can also explore Archer’s server administration guide for additional information about managing server infrastructure.

For network-related concerns, Archer also provides resources covering firewalls and network protection.

Conclusion

Server uptime and security monitoring provide visibility into the health, availability, performance, and security of your technology environment.

Tools such as UptimeRobot can provide straightforward availability monitoring, while platforms such as Pingdom, Datadog, and New Relic offer broader performance and observability capabilities.

The most important step is not simply choosing a monitoring product. It is determining what needs to be monitored, which events require attention, who responds to alerts, and how monitoring data will be used to prevent recurring problems.

For businesses that rely on websites, servers, networks, and online applications, proactive monitoring can form an important part of a broader IT management strategy.

If your business needs help managing servers, networks, hosting, or ongoing IT infrastructure, contact Archer IT Solutions to discuss your requirements.